The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that the UK and European launch of Disney+ will feature lowered streaming quality due to the demand internet providers are being faced with as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic. With more people working at home thanks to COVID-19, networks are definitely suffering, and a streaming service like this one obviously won't help!
YouTube and Netflix have already lowered streaming quality at the behest of the European Union, and the launch of Disney+ has actually been postponed in France.
It's still coming to the UK tomorrow, though, and Disney's chairman direct-to-consumer and international, Kevin Mayer, has stated that, "In line with Disney’s longstanding commitment to act responsibly, we are responding to the request of European Commissioner for Internal Market, Thierry Breton, to work together to ensure the smooth functioning of the broadband infrastructure."
"In anticipation of high consumer demand for Disney+," he continued, "we are proactively instituting measures to lower our overall bandwidth utilization by at least 25 percent in all of the markets launching Disney+ on March 24th. In the coming days, we will be monitoring Internet congestion and working closely with internet service providers to further reduce bit rates as necessary to ensure they are not overwhelmed by consumer demand."
Disney+ is indeed likely to be met by a higher than expected demand because there are more people at home (including kids now that schools are closed), so this move makes perfect sense.
It is, of course, a little worrying to think that streaming services could suffer over the coming months because with theaters closed, we don't really have much else to do! Still, no 4K episodes of The Mandalorian might just have to be a sacrifice we're forced to make to stop networks from collapsing.
Disney+ arrives tomorrow in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain and Switzerland.